Your Weekly Weapon

The word is, poise. Pocket poise.

In high school, my senior year, I opted to play football here in Las Vegas.

Vargas! Coach suggested my name to play quarterback, (I could throw a ball 60 yards on the football field) …

Mind you, I was a baseball player, NOT a football guy so everything in this game was quite the shock, and ass kickinnn’…

Quickly, I learned the physical implications of not having poise in a pocket that was collapsing on me.

Years later, I borrow from those days and to this day work more on enhancing these skills.

Not some fake confidence, not some aversion to taking the hard hits in life…

Poise.

The kind that holds steady when everything’s trying to knock you off your rhythm.

Like Tom Brady in the pocket.

5… 6…sometimes 7 men much much larger, faster, stronger than the ones I battled in high school.

300 plus pounds sprinting full speed to crush him, collapse his pocket, sack his you. know. what.

Rattle him.

I’d go as far as saying Brady doesn’t flinch as he reads, scans, plants, and delivers a football to the target.

Sure he gets sacked.

But did he ever have that poise under pressure.

Which is why he’s the GOAT.

And that’s follow-up.

Because the moment you follow up after it’s been 7 days since the last reply and you begin to tell yourself the prospect is the problem…

When you feel that pressure to quit, give up, or wait until next week, that’s the 300 pound men collapsing your pocket about to sack you to the ground.

Made me think about how to build pocket poise in follow-up.

Not all composure is created equal. You might be composed in a work situation but when your toddler jumps off the couch you lose your shit.

So, identify how you perform under ALL pressures not just one that you’re already comfortable with and figure out how your follow up feels in such a situation.

Keep your eyes downfield. (long game mentality)

The enormous amount of times people lose because they get distracted by the scoreboard would shock you.

What do I mean?

You’re up 28 points in the Super Bowl and you stop doing all of the little things correctly.

You let you foot off the gas.

You’ve forgot what it took to get those points and then more so forgot that there is a competitor or several for that matter across from you.

If they want it bad enough and are willing to stick to the process, run the play, don’t get distracted by the score, then there is a strong chance they come back and win.

Brady was NEVER counted out for a lot of reasons but for the sake of this share, it was because he was poised more ofter than not.

Your version?

Practice pocket poise…in follow up.

Nobody getting back to you, keep doing all of the little things correctly.

Don’t believe you belong in the room, think about Kobe Bryant when he entered the league right out of high school as a kid. Didn’t stop him.

He believed he belonged on that court and proved it.

If you’re falling short on your follow through, plant your feet, analyze, scan, interpret, make the messages move.

Sure you might get sacked, throw an interception, but poise 90% is still a great number.

Where do you STAND?

Where are you flinching in follow-up? And the question is, how can I stay in the pocket 1% better this week?